analysis #2

Analysis #2

Part 1

As I walk past the extravagant building I wonder what looms inside its walls. I see it every day on my walk to and from the bus stop and marvel at its beauty. In the morning it is an unimaginable white, the whitest white that I have ever seen. But at night, that is when its vast beauty is truly visible. The stained glass windows are illuminated with a welcoming glow. The lights surrounding the vast building emphasize its every angle. The gold plated man blowing a horn on the top of the tallest pillar is shinier than ever. I wonder what the inside looks like.

Years I have been passing this extravagant beauty and always wondered what it is, what’s inside. Today I venture to the marvelous white building, I am determined after six years of goggling at it to finally approach it, to stop wondering what the lights inside are lighting, and to see for myself. I walk curiously around the corner onto Charmant Drive and see huge white gates leading up the vast grass and into a surrounding parking lot. I approach the gates and see that there is a place for some sort of attendant to be at the entrance but the quaint room is vacant. I head towards the opening between the two gates and see the sign out in front on the matching white cement wall. It reads, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Mormons I think to myself. This building is owned by the Mormon Church. My brow furrows, and I stop before I enter the gates. I stare up at the beautiful building; it is closer than I have ever been to it before. I can now vividly see the grass and extravagant flower arrangements all around it. I glance at the sign again and read it softly to myself. Then I turn around and head towards my house without a turning back.

Part 2

For this analysis I am going to focus largely on Edmund Burke, specifically his ideas and opinions on the sublime. To begin, in the first part of this analysis I created a story of a man curious about a beautiful building that he sees every day, and one day he decides to take a closer look and find out exactly what it is. This is the first principle that Burke explains in his work “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.” He explains that it is the simplest emotion in the human mind (454). The story that I created also relates closely with what Burke explains as the motivation for one’s curiosity and that is passion. Various theorists that we have encountered thus far have touched on passion and how strongly it influences are decisions and more importantly our perceptions.

The two elements that I have explained thus far relate largely to Longinus’ depiction of the sublime. However, a very important difference that Burke exemplifies in his work is that the sublime is not secluded to pleasurable things alone, but also includes the painful or the negative. In relevance to the perception of the character that I created in part one of the analysis I want to refer to Section V. Joy and Grief in Burke’s text. In this section he explains the cessation of pleasure and that it affects the mind in three ways. He writes, “If it [pleasure] simply ceases, after having continued a proper time, the effect is indifference; if it be abruptly broken off, there ensues an uneasy sense called disappointment” (457). I will elaborate on the third principle after I relate this back to the story. The unnamed protagonist ventures to an extravagant building out of curiosity; however, when he discovers that it is a Temple for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints he is disappointed and decides to leave without fulfilling the goal that initially started his journey. The third stage or mindset reached is explained by Burke, “if the object be so totally lost that there is no chance of enjoying it again, a passion arises in the mind, which is called grief” (457). I found this definition of grief to be quite diverse to the common knowledge of it today. Here Burke explains that grief is not today’s understanding or deep sadness or depression, although he does not rule that out, he merely explains that the passion that was sparked by curiosity has been lost. The object of one’s desire can no longer be reached, or the desire to reach it is no longer relevant. In relationship to our character, he once walked past the temple awestruck and curious, and yet when he finds out what it really is he is disappointed and no longer desires to see the inside of it.

Although this is a somewhat silly story the explanation is valuable and relative. Burke explains that pleasure and pain are not opposing forces per say. Or more importantly they are not predicated on one another like the master/slave relationship proposed by Hegel. But rather, that they are two entities that create sublimity and beauty, and that there is a grey area between the two known as indifference.

Works Cited

Burke, Edmund. “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.” The Norton Anthology of Critical Theory & Criticism 2^nd Edition. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 2010. 454-460.